Listen to Nick Evans explain what he will bring as England’s new attack coach and his priority could not be clearer. Clarity will be the order of the day when the New Zealander steps into the Test arena – not so much an instant transfer of all the intricacies of Harlequins’ swashbuckling attack but to strip things back, avoid “death by detail” and bring direction to the players who have already told Steve Borthwick it has been lacking of late. And no more so than to the partnership between Marcus Smith and Owen Farrell.
Evans’s views on the Smith-Farrell axis are fascinating. He is Smith’s mentor at Harlequins and in these pages as a columnist he has previously praised Farrell’s qualities. When he says: “There’s no reason they can’t play together,” it implies that they have not dovetailed to great effect to date, that the muddle that clouded so much of England’s thinking in the final matches under Jones was borne out in their partnership.
